Heart Attack Didn't Kill Uncle - Rip Current Did

Manish Patel, A 28-year-old Canadian Man, Had Been Trying To Help His Niece.

September 17, 1997|By Charlene Hager-Van Dyke of The Sentinel Staff

ORMOND BEACH — The Volusia County Medical Examiner's Office has ruled that a 28-year-old Canadian man who died Sunday after getting lifeguards to save his niece drowned after the two got caught in a rip current.

Dr. Ronald Reeves said Tuesday that an autopsy on Manish Patel showed he had drowned and had not suffered a heart attack as a Volusia County Beach Department official reported Monday.

Patel, a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, was pronounced dead at 5 p.m. Sunday at Columbia Peninsula Medical Center in Ormond Beach.

''We thought initially it was a heart attack, and the Medical Examiner's Office later told us it was a drowning,'' said Joe Wooden, Volusia County deputy beach chief, who on Monday said Patel's death could have been caused by cardiac arrest.

Patel is the seventh person to drown off a Volusia County beach this year and the second to die since Labor Day.

The accident occurred at 3:50 p.m. near the Cardinal Drive beach approach when six people got caught in a rip current. While the majority of them were struggling, Patel's 12-year-old niece, Falguni Patel, went under, Wooden said.

''Our preliminary investigation showed he was found in 4 feet of water,'' Wooden said. ''But later we found that he was pulled out into deeper water by the rip current and his brother-in-law got him to 4 feet of water.''

Wooden said that because the lifeguards did not see him in water over his head, they assumed he did not drown.

Falguni was taken to Columbia and later flown to Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children & Women in Orlando, where a hospital spokeswoman said she was released Tuesday.